Getting an A on an English Paper

Grades

This is a guide about getting an A. Here's what that
means in my classes. (For those with other professors, your
mileage may vary.)

Here are the categories I use when I assign grades:

A

Only the best papers earn an A: they do everything
that a B paper does (see below), and they go beyond that
by catching my attention. A papers not only do nothing
wrong; they're engaging and say something interesting.
They're well organized and well written, not only avoiding
mistakes but showing real elegance and grace. Most of all,
they're daring or unexpected: they teach me something new, or
show me something about a text I hadn't seen before.

A paper will earn some kind of C if it's lacking one
or more of the essential ingredients for a B. The most
common problem is a bad thesis
— that does in more papers than every other problem
combined. But others have reasonable theses but are weak on close readings. Style and mechanics alone rarely doom a paper to
C-dom, but someone with poor writing skills who can't get
a point across might end up with a C for that reason.

D

I don't give many D's. Only those with more than one
serious problem deserve that sort of treatment. A paper
with no recognizable thesis, with only
a superficial grasp of the text, and really poor expression, for
instance — that's D territory. If you're earning
D's in my classes, you should certainly talk to me, and
maybe to the Writing Center; it means you need to do a lot of
work.

F

Here's my bargain: I won't fail any paper that shows honest
effort. That means F's are reserved for papers that show
no effort (if it was dashed off two hours before it was
due, for instance), and for those that aren't honest. Plagiarism will always earn you an
F not only for the paper but for the course, and might
even result in disciplinary action like suspension or expulsion:
it's serious stuff.

It's frustrating to have to shoehorn papers into the small
number of categories available to me: at Rutgers, I have to
choose among A, B+, B, C+, C, D, and F. I'm therefore fond of
pluses, minuses, and various combinations — A-/B+, that
sort of thing — to show which way a paper is leaning. A
paper that starts with a reasonable thesis, for instance, but that doesn't use
evidence well enough to make a convincing argument, might earn a
B-minus. All these niceties are lost when I submit a
final grade, but I try to be as clear as possible.

As I said, these are my guidelines. Students are
sometimes convinced that grades are assigned almost randomly:
Professor A gives an A- and Professor B gives a C+ to the same
paper. But in fact the variability in grading isn't what it
seems. Most wide divergences in grades result from a paper that
does some things very well and others very badly —
Professor A might think the close
reading is perceptive enough to make up for the weak thesis, while Professor B thinks the vague
thesis dooms the paper to a lower grade, however insightful the
readings. Or it might be use of evidence versus
mechanical mistakes, or whatever. And sometimes it depends on
what sort of class you're in: English Composition 101 might
expect something different from Advanced Readings in Postmodern
American Authors. But most professors will agree within, say,
half a grade on a paper that's consistently good or bad.